Who is Left
by feetonthemoon
Summary: After killing twelve muggles, severing his finger and running away from Sirius, Peter reflects on why he made all the wrong choices.


"_War does not determine who is right - only who is left."_

\- Bertrand Russell

Peter ran and ran and ran. He was small enough to move in between people's feet, small enough not to get noticed. He ignored the throbbing pain in his right hand and just ran away from the crowd that had quickly formed where twelve dead bodies and a finger surrounded the frantic Sirius Black. It wasn't supposed to be that way.

He finally stopped running after a couple of hours. He was in the middle of a forest and he had not seen a person for miles, so he assumed he was safe. He transformed back into his human form: a twenty-one year old boy, with dull blond hair and watery blue eyes. He used to be bigger, but anxiety had eaten him away the last few months and now he was almost skinny. He had dark circles under his eyes and he looked tired and sick. He looked down at his hand, where his index finger used to be and where now there was only blood and nothingness. He turned around and threw up. He ripped part of his t-shirt and wrapped his hand in it. In no time, the piece of cloth had already absorbed enough blood to be completely red.

He didn't realize he was crying, but he told himself he must have been doing so from pain since the moment he severed his finger. It was not true. He was not crying from _physical_ pain, at least not only from that. It was something that tore at his heart and made every cell in his body ache. Everything had gone wrong. He was alive but he might as well be dead. For a second he almost wished he had let Sirius killed him. However, that feeling didn't last long, because what had gotten him into all this trouble to begin with had been his desire to stay alive no matter what, to survive. And he wasn't going to let go of that.

When the war broke he followed his friends into battle. They fought for justice and fairness and peace: they were the _good guys_. He would follow them to the end of the world because he knew that if he followed them, the end of the world would never come. The _good guys _had to win the war because they were _right_. But as the years passed he realised that his thought process had been downright foolish. One night, after James had barely escaped a Death Eater's attack, he realised that they were losing the war. The other side was much stronger than they were and they were winning. This knowledge weighed heavily on his heart and made him wonder which was the _right_ side to be on. Peter wanted to live. He was far too young to die and he hadn't accomplished anything yet. He decided the _rightness _of either side had nothing to do with the _rightness _of their ideals and everything to do with who was going to win.

He didn't have to think for long before coming to the conclusion of who would be the victor and realising he was standing on the wrong side of the line. And that's why he betrayed his friends. They were never going to switch sides so he was going to have to do it on his own. Voldemort must have sensed his weakness –and that's exactly what it was: a weakness– because he sent a messenger to recruit him. He gave in easily, but what else could he do? If he had turned down the offer there and then he would have been killed instantly. All he had to do was watch and wait until he was needed.

When Sirius suggested that Peter should be the Secret Keeper, his heart sunk. He could not say no to the request: it would be suspicious and, worse, the Dark Lord would know and he would be killed. He could only say yes and that's what he did. The same day that the Potters went into hiding, Peter told Voldemort where he could find them. That's how he sealed his fate. He was unquestionably on the wrong side of the battle, which was to say the _right _one, because it was the side that was going to win. He tried to convince himself that James and Lily would've died by the end of the war even if he didn't rat them out. They were on the losing side after all, and the Dark Lord wouldn't leave any survivors. If he hadn't betrayed them he would have died and they would have died as well, eventually. The way he saw it, he was doing the sensible thing: at least one of them was going to live.

He was the only one who knew where they were, which meant that when they were attacked people would know he was the one that had sold them out. But it wouldn't matter then, because if what the Dark Lord had said was true, everything would be over after he took care of Harry (Peter could not bear to think about Harry, that poor boy that he might as well have killed with his bare hands). Fate, however, seemed to have a trick under the sleeve, one last joke on Peter.

The moment the Dark Lord attacked the child the curse turned on him and he vanished. In a matter of seconds the rightside became the _right _side, but Peter was forever stuck in the wrong side, which was now the _wrong_ side. There was no turning back; Sirius knew he was the Secret Keeper and he would tell everyone and he would end up in Azkaban or dead. He had betrayed his friend to save his life and in doing so he had signed his death warrant. He might have found the whole situation funny if it wasn't his life.

The morning of the first of November 1981 Peter heard the news and decided to flee. It wasn't so much a decision as the only alternative left. There was no way he could talk himself out of that mess. However, Sirius connected the dots far quicker than he expected him to. Peter was in the middle of the street when a furious figure pushed him against a wall. Sirius' eyes looked manic and ready to kill. Peter did the only thing he could think of and he started to shout that Sirius was to blame for the betrayal. He knew the lie would not hold, but he only needed to distract Sirius and the people around them (most of them muggles) long enough to transform and escape. But Sirius was vicious and if he didn't do something quick he would be dead in a couple of minutes. He had to kill Sirius. If he did that he might not even need to run away because there would be nobody alive who knew he was the Secret Keeper. If he killed Sirius everyone would think he was the one to betray the Potters. And people wouldn't even question Peter's motives for killing him, because he could claim he was threatening him. It was the only thing left to do. But Peter couldn't control his emotions, and the moment the _Avada Kedavra_ left his lips he knew there was something wrong. A thick cloud of greenish smoke appeared on the street and twelve people dropped dead, none of them Sirius. Peter was good at thinking plans in the heat of the moment (even if he sometimes failed disastrously at executing them) and he casted a quick _diffindo_ charm that made a clean cut and severed one of his fingers from his right hand. He dropped it at the scene before the smoke disappeared and transformed himself into a rat. When they found the finger they would assume he was dead and that Sirius had killed him, or so he hoped. He should've stayed and killed Sirius, it would be safer for him if he was dead, but he didn't know what had gone wrong and he couldn't risk it again.

Now he was completely alone in the middle of nowhere. He had betrayed everyone who had loved him and whom he had loved. In order to be safe he would have to live out his life as a rat, because it wasn't safe for him to go back into the community. His Animagus form being a rat made perfect sense now and, once again, he might have found it funny if it wasn't his life.

_It could be worse_, he thought. He wasn't _right_, but at least he was alive.


End file.
